Romance Cassettes Bank On Formula

February 20, 1987|By CHRISTINE VOGEL, Special to the News/Sun-Sentinel (Christine Vogel is a syndicated books columnist.)

Dack Rambo. Simon MacCorkindale. Parker Stevenson. Nicholas Campbell. Names you may recognize if you`re a devotee of prime-time soaps operas. Then again, you may draw a blank on every one. But if Ken Atchity, head of L/A House Productions Inc. has his way, the men attached to these names soon will be some of the newest video heartthrobs.

Atchity is the brains behind Shades of Love, the newest line of video romance films, set to launch in March with Lilac Dreams. Each of the first eight releases has a color in the title, which is carried through in the packaging of the cassettes and the paperback novelizations that he anticipates will be tied in with each film.

Unlike the Harlequin romance films, which air on cable networks, Shades of Love videos are being designed for purchase. At a running time of about 80 minutes each, and at a ``consumer friendly`` price tag of $14.95 (cheap for a video cassette but a quantum leap above the price of a series romance paperback), the sole U.S. distributor for the series (Karl-Lorimar Home Video) is anticipating that each of the first four films will sell between 100,000 and 200,000 units.

Why is Atchity so confident this concept will succeed? According to one press release supplied by Shades of Love, he realized it while teaching classes in literature, creativity and time management (Atchity, it should be noted, has a doctorate from Yale in comparative literature, and studied with Erich Segal, author of the pinnacle of romance schmaltz, Love Story).

``I came to realize that in these high-pressured times women were the greatest of all time jugglers. No wonder they had an immediate crush on the VCR. It`s a time shifting device (that) allows the contemporary woman to program information and entertainment on her own time.``

He further thought that earlier attempts to translate romances to television and film had failed because too many producers did not understand the romance formula. Atchity says that the Shades of Love films use a traditional concept of contemporary romance as their bible, filming the movies from the heroine`s viewpoint. He has compressed the length of the films (from the normal 90 or 120 minutes to 75 or 80) in the belief that time-pressured women will appreciate the shorter form.

His strategy in casting each film has been to use a relatively unknown actress playing her first major role to enable the female viewer to more easily identify with the character, and to emphasize the presence of a well- known male TV actor as a hook to draw audiences into the fantasy. Each film also will feature an original love song by a well-known artist, and a series of sound track audio cassettes, which Atchity told Variety would be ``music to make love by.``

But will they sell? Atchity says his informal research has shown him that the same women who buy VCRs and videos are the ones reading romance novels. He and his associates (who include ``story consultant`` Vivian Stephens, the former editor who helped create Harlequin`s American Romance line and Dell`s Ecstasy line) don`t see any potential conflict facing consumers over whether to invest in a video or purchase the novel. Stephens has been quoted as saying it`s the same as it is with the movies, that people read Gone With the Wind and it didn`t detract from the movie.

Perhaps. But here is one time-pressured reader of romances and devoted fan of the aforementioned classical novel and film who has let dinner burn while watching Atlanta do the same, and has even recorded it off the television (with a hand ever ready near the pause button to eliminate the commercials), but has yet to purchase a single video cassette that was not blank (not even a Jane Fonda Workout -- New, Low Impact or middle age version).

And where will they sell? Negotiations are under way to get Shades of Love into the same places where most romance novels are sold -- the grocery store. And Atchity and Karl-Lorimar Home Video are no doubt hoping that before too long their videos will be sliding along supermarket conveyor belts all across the country. Cassettes along with cabbages? An update on this will be forthcoming in several months.